I don’t know how he does it, but every time CityTV’s Breakfast Television (BT) co-host Kevin Frankish commands me to write music, I do it.
Yesterday, he mentioned they needed some music for a segment they call “ask Kevin and Dina” (Pugliese, the other co-host) as they threw to a commercial. My silly brain wrote this tune almost instantaneously, and by the time the commercial break was done, I knew what the song would be.
Well, it looks like my seven-year-old daughter was right after all. Unicorns do indeed exist.
This cute little fella is a one-year-old Roe deer living in the Centre of Natural Sciences in Prato, Italy (near Florence). The director if the centre, Gilberto Tozzi, is clearly a man with a sense of humour. “This is fantasy becoming reality,” said Tozzi recently. “The unicorn has always been a mythological animal.”
Even though this is the first documented case of deer with a centrally positioned single horn (off-centre positioning is not unheard of), Tozzi believes that if it can happen now, it may also have happened in the past, and this creature may actually be very similar the original inspiration for the unicorn myth.
This particular deer, lovingly dubbed “Unicorn” by his keepers, is a genetic anomaly; his twin with a simply average pair of horns (no photo ops for you!).
I’ve had the worst music stuck in my head for days, so I thought I’d share it:
Yup, “Rock and Roll Crazy Nights” by Japanese hair-metal band Loudness. I watched the PowerHour on MuchMusic way too much in the 80s - chalk it up to the mountain-sized crush I used to have on VJ Teresa Roncon - and as a result I have all this cheese in my subconscious. Grrr.
Oh well, I can’t purge the chorus from my head, so I’m using the internet to spread it like a virus. Watch if you dare (suckers).
I was lucky enough to be in the pit for R.E.M.’s show at the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto last night (#remtoronto). Nice job if you can get it; you get to stand in a narrow trough in front of the stage for the first three songs, legendary musicians sweating on you. I’m digging it.
Anyway, right before the lights go down, I noticed that Peter Buck’s guitar rig had this incredible display of dinosaur figures on it. [See photo above]
Sometimes, the story going on behind the story is almost as interesting, even though it has nothing to do with the story itself.
I started writing late last year after I’d been home looking after my son for a year or so. I’d come to the conclusion that my prior career, maintaining websites for other people, was not going to bring me any lasting happiness, so I started writing to see if it would go anywhere. It’s definitely more interesting than managing code for others, but I think the most interesting aspect of my current position is the constant juggling act between writing and stay-at-home fatherhood, especially since my youngest is still too young to go to school.
Right now, I’ve got two big things going on in my life; I’m getting ready for music festival season (I write a lot about music) and I’m trying to potty train the little guy. While I’m trying to line up as many interviews as possible with musicians playing the big Toronto-area events this summer (North By North East, Toronto Jazz Festival), I’m trying to get my mini me to clue in that his time in diapers is rapidly coming to an end. Fortunately for me, he’s starting to clue in, and this week we’re have our first measurable success.
When Fredric J. Baur passed away at the age of 89 on May 4th, his family found themselves in a slightly awkward position; Baur, inventor of the famous cylindrical Pringles can, had left instructions that his cremated remains should be interred in his creation.
In Utrecht, Netherlands, a young man got way more than he bargained for when he pressed his naked buttocks against a restaurant window: the glass broke, and his butt got cut.
